Google in Australia promised not to show proxies and mirrors of pirated sites in search results

Google has signed a memorandum with the rights holders of Australia: a search engine promises to block proxies and mirrors of pirate sites without a court decision. The new memorandum is designed to eliminate the situation where alternative URLs of sites blocked through a court order were easy to find.

In the past, Australia enjoyed a reputation as a breeding ground for piracy. Rights holders regularly sought help from the authorities, lobbying together to pass the Blocking Access to Stolen Content Act. It was adopted in 2015, and the first requests from rights holders were submitted immediately afterwards. Since then, Internet service providers have blocked access to many sites that violate intellectual property rights.

The problem remained with proxies, mirrors and their issuance in search of Google and other search engines. In this regard, a new law was adopted in 2018, which simplified the blocking of access to these types of sites. Initially Google resisted the innovation, but last year the search engine voluntarily agreed to remove hundreds of sites from the Australian issue without a court decision.

As you know, after blocking an illegal site often starts new domains that are easy to find through search. Access to the new eagles, of course, can again be closed through the court, but it is months of work. “Pirates take the time between creating an illegal mirror site by changing one letter in the address, and it takes us three or four weeks to bring a lawsuit through the court system,” explained Graham Burke, chairman of Creative Content Australia. The agreement thus closes a huge loophole for pirates.

Vyacheslav Miyenko, head of the Pure Sky Initiative, which focuses on combating content theft in Ukraine, commented: “An excellent example of B2B cooperation. Combining different market players with common values always gives good results. In 2017, we implemented a pre-trial mechanism of blocking illegal resources at the legislative level, but we still need a more active position of the regulator in this matter (note the Ministry of Economy).

The legislation on blocking resources by providers in Ukraine is not perfect, but we are working in this direction. Cooperation with Google on automatic blocking in the search for links to illegal content we have as a goal in 2019. We are glad that it already has practical implementation in the world and we are confident that Google will respond to our offer of cooperation”.

“We hope that these measures will be another step towards copyright protection and give rights holders a quick solution,” said Lucinda Longcroft, Director of Public Policy at Google Australia.